Topics

TV, Media & Games

Technology tools have exponentially expanded the potential for communication in the world today. In recent years, serious games and web-based media have joined television as both ways to deliver content to young people and as tools for young people to construct and represent their knowledge of themselves and the world around them. To become thoughtful citizens, capable of participating in and contributing to this media-rich world, young people must become digitally literate interpreters and users of new media. Educators must not only be able to use these tools but are expected to do so. While technology offers a compelling medium for students to express ideas, key to this process is recognizing that learning begins not with a focus on the technology, but on what the student wants to say. Select a snapshot below to learn more about the kinds of work we do in this area.

CCT staff who have played prominent roles in this domain include Shelley Pasnik and Cornelia Brunner.

• Snapshot 1
  As a National R&D Center on Instructional Technology, we are taking a close look at how game-based activities can aid science and literacy instruction. We are collaborating with colleagues at EDC and Electric Funstuff to develop and pilot-test a a series of game modules—built around the Nintendo DS—that plug inquiry-based game activities into traditional classroom practice. Rather than stand alone, the game modules will fit into regular curricula and will take aim at the science misconceptions, reading difficulties, and motivational issues that hamper student learning and complicate science teaching.
• Snapshot 2
  The Ready To Learn (RTL) Initiative, jointly run by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), seeks to address the literacy needs of low-income children, ages 2 to 8, through television/online programming informed by scientifically-based reading research and an outreach campaign designed to engage children and their parents, caregivers, and educators. As RTL's evaluators, CCT is working with CPB, PBS, the content producers, American Institutes for Research, and research partner SRI on a five-year evaluation culminating in a randomized controlled trial to examine whether the initiative accomplishes its literacy goals.
• Snapshot 3
  Playing 4 Keeps (P4K) is an after school program that encourages traditionally underserved youth to create online games designed to educate their peers about important social issues (see the first-year game: The Cost of Life; Read the Threshold Magazine's Spring 2007 profile of the program, "Gaming the Future.") As the program's evaluator, CCT is investigating how P4K influences youth attitudes about themselves, game design and civic literacy; in what ways students see P4K as a vehicle for learning; and in what ways educators can apply game design to promote student learning.